Detection and Tracking of Ships in the Canadian Arctic

Abstract

The Canadian Arctic is becoming increasingly important as climate change and economic pressures stimulate increasing activity in the region. The number of transits, cruise ships, and adventurer expeditions in this area is on the rise. Ensuring environmental, economic, archeological, defence, safety and security responsibilities in this challenging area has resulted in many recent investments including the Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels and the RADARSAT Constellation Mission. This chapter will explore the challenges in detection and tracking of ships in the Arctic from perspectives including: ship-ice discrimination in remote sensing, sparse data tracking, effects of constrained navigation, and operational decision aids.

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Acknowledgements

Gratefully acknowledged is Paris W. Vachon of DRDC Ottawa Research Centre, who provided helpful comments, discussion, and reference material related to space based SAR and S-AIS. The author also acknowledges the Arctic dataset provided by the Royal Canadian Navy’s Global Position Warehouse developed and maintained by the team of Scott Syms and Andrew DeBaie. The operational ship detection capabilities of RADARSAT-2 and the RADARSAT Constellation Mission are implemented via the Department of National Defence Polar Epsilon and Polar Epsilon 2 projects, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, and DRDC Ottawa Research Centre.